


Silent Night

by dem_hips



Category: Mother 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushuu | EarthBound
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dem_hips/pseuds/dem_hips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Chosen Four have returned to Onett to retrieve the mysterious Zexonyte from the meteorite in order to move forward in their plan to defeat Giygas, but this is possibly the toughest trial they've faced thusfar, and it will take all their courage and friendship to succeed.  Written for a (self-imposed) Christmas Carol challenge, based on Sinead O'Connor's version of "Silent Night."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Night

This didn’t make any sense.  When they had teleported out of Saturn Valley, the sun was shining brightly.  Though it was cold and a few clouds traced the sky, a few birds still sang, and Ness’s heart had been light, bolstered with the strength and wisdom with which he had been imbued upon his awakening in Fire Spring.  From speaking with Dr. Andonuts, he knew the end of their long journey was near, and he felt that he-- _they_ \--had the strength to finish what they started.  To defeat Giygas.  
  
But now they were back in Onett, to secure the final piece to the puzzle of traveling ten years into the past to save their future, and everything was wrong.  These once-familiar streets were dark, devoid of human life.  And they crawled with creatures, hideous, more powerful versions of what Giygas and his dark army had thrown at them in the past.  Like those defeated monsters’ spirits now sought to haunt them.  
  
“I’m not detecting we’ve gone through any sort of time warp,” Jeff reported, holding one of his esoteric instruments up to his thick glasses. “By all my calculations, the sun should be out right now.”  
  
“It’s like it’s forgotten how to shine,” Paula said, shivering more from unease than from the cold fog that hung in the air.  The darkness was accented by a strange blue glow; the town was visible, but unfamiliar under the muffled, otherworldly light.  “What’s going on?”  
  
“Giygas must know we are here, and what we’re after.”  The Prince turned slowly in place, swiftly drawing his sword. “Get ready.”  
  
The monsters milling around had caught wind of their location, and several were attempting to sneak up on them.  Poo’s warning came just in time; Paula turned and cast a Shield quickly, reflecting a potentially devastating Starstorm attack back at...  
  
“What _is_ that?” Ness cried, heart in his throat with the close call. “I thought we were finished with the Starmen back in Winters!”  
  
“Looks like we’re not that lucky.”  Biting his lip in concentration, Jeff knelt to set up a bottle rocket.  
  
“How close are we to the meteorite?” Poo asked, turning his blade on an octopus-shaped robotic form to the group’s right.  
  
“Not very close,” was Ness’s grim response.  They had arrived on the main road of the town, but the meteorite that housed their precious Zexonyte was way up in the hills to the north, beyond his house.  “It’s gonna be a long road up there.”  He stopped talking in favor of focusing on smashing a one-eyed creature to their left with his baseball bat.  
  
Together, they took out the three monsters that had come upon them, and Poo ushered the group between a pair of close buildings.  “We will need to be careful,” he advised, his sword still unsheathed. “If these creatures are looking for us, we will be in for many battles.  It is unwise to allow them to sap our strength.  Master Ness,” he continued, turning his dark eyes solely on their leader, “I suggest we find the shortest route and avoid as many battles as we can.”  
  
Ness nodded.  As usual, the older boy’s advice was sound, and once again he found himself relying on the Prince’s more experienced words.  
  
“Lead the way, Ness,” Paula agreed, smiling gently at him. “We can make it if we work together.”  
  
“I’d venture to say we’ve gotten through worse.”  Jeff’s face was as impassive as ever, but Ness thought he saw a glimmer of a grin behind the boy’s thick glasses.  
  
He looked out at the eerily blue-washed streets.  Ness had spent his entire childhood here, growing up in the close-knit town of Onett, walking these streets home from school every day.  He knew his way by heart, could have walked home blindfolded if he had to, so he was not worried about losing their path.  It was just that the strange, dim lights, the clusters of Giygas’s minions haunting these precious streets, unnerved and angered him at once.  Once again this entity was disrupting the peaceful lives of people all around the world: here, the rest of Eagleland, and beyond, striking them with fear and confusion.  To even his own eyes, his town seemed alien and unnatural.  
  
But his friends were right; each in their own way they offered him comfort and familiarity: Paula’s gentle kindness, Jeff’s logical assurance, Poo’s solid advice. He could not have gotten this far without each of them, and he could not finish this without all their help.  
  
“You’re right,” Ness said, unable to help a small smile back, encompassing his three companions.  “Let’s get going.”  
  
The road north was indeed long, the creatures infesting Onett forcing them to pause far more than once behind buildings or within stands of trees.  They battled only when they had to, and though these altercations wore them out, they trudged onward together.  They healed each other, encouraged each other; when one fell, the other three were there to pick them back up.  If they kept moving, kept heading onward towards their goal, the cold could not seem to touch them, the fog roiling like long, thin fingers parted for their advancement, and the blue glow grew more and more familiar.  There was no end to the creatures that dogged their path, but the farther they walked, the less distance remained between them and their goal.  
  
As they reached the end of the dirt road up where the hills began, Paula took a moment to glance at the house in front of them.  Behind a short, cute wooden fence, the building stood dark, quiet, and still.  “Ness,” she said slowly, noticing his eyes also wandering in that direction. “Do you want to check up on your mom and your sister?”  
  
Startled, Jeff’s gaze shot up to the house as well, and Poo’s followed with calm curiosity behind.  “This is Master Ness’s house...?”  
  
Their leader nodded, biting at his lower lip.  “If they haven’t taken shelter somewhere else,” he answered after a long moment, “then at least they should be safe in there.  I don’t want to draw attention to them.”  
  
“I think that is wise,” the Prince agreed, noting on Ness’s face how difficult the decision must have been for him.  He couldn’t tell by the younger boy’s expression, though, the worry that if he entered his house, now, faced with his mother’s warm, smiling face and a plate of her famous steak, he may have found it difficult to leave.  
  
“Let’s keep going.”  Chest tight, Ness turned away from his house and continued on the road.  He spared Pokey’s neighboring house only a brief glance before he led his friends up into the hills, where more of Giygas’s monsters were waiting for them.  


* * *

  
Despite their preparations in Saturn Valley, their supplies were running low.  For the first time in a long time, Ness’s yellow backpack felt oddly light as he continued to remove its contents as needed.  Behind Lier X. Agerate’s house, they huddled together around Jeff, who had become mostly immobile after the last battle.  One of the creepy one-eyed monsters had numbed his body when his PSI shield failed against an onslaught of psychic power.  Ness was breathing heavily from exertion himself as he removed one of the strange, potent herbs the Mr. Saturns had sold them from his share of the supplies.  
  
“Ness...don’t...” Jeff tried, his voice coming slowly.  It felt as if his body had disappeared out from under him; he tried to push his friend’s hand away, but he was too slow.  
  
“Jeff, don’t try to talk,” Paula urged, leaning forward a little to help open his mouth. “We’ll have you back to normal in no time.”  
  
She closed his mouth again once the herb was inside, and it slowly brought feeling and movement back to his body.  
  
“You shouldn’t have done that!” he protested as soon as he could, by which time it was of course far too late.  “That was our last one, wasn’t it?”  
  
Ness busied himself with closing his bag back up, but his refusal to answer was as much confirmation as Jeff needed.  
  
“You shouldn’t have used it!”  Behind his glasses, the blonde boy’s eyebrows scrunched up in frustration.  “We need to ration out everything we have--”  
  
“We _are_ ,” Poo responded, levelly. “We have nearly arrived now, and we are running out of things to ration.  Besides,” he added, rising to check around the side of the house, “it was doubtless an appropriate time to use it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ness agreed, standing also and holding out a hand to help Jeff up. “What were we supposed to do, leave you here?”  
  
“The answer to that, just so you know, is no way!” Paula added, giving Jeff a smile and a quick, one-armed hug before getting to her feet.  
  
“You guys...”  Jeff sighed to hide a smile, adjusted his glasses, and accepted Ness’s helping hand up.  “Still.  Do you really think we can make it?”  The four gathered at the corner of the house, peering at what remained of their path to the meteorite.  “There’s a lot of monsters still in our way.  Maybe we should turn back, get more supplies.”  
  
“We prepared as effectively as we could,” Poo reminded him, his dark eyes focused on the road ahead. “Going back would mean getting to this point a second time.”  
  
“We’ll keep going,” Ness agreed, turning his head back to look at his friends. “We’re nearly there.  We can make it.”  
  
“We should hurry, then.”  Jeff adjusted his glasses again, to give his hands something to do. “Seems like the longer we wait the more monsters show up.”  
  
“One quick dash to the finish line?” Paula suggested, hefting her frying pan.  
  
The boys nodded at each other.  “On three, then.  One...two...three!”  
  
They ran, keeping together as they always had, incapacitating whatever got in the way of their weapons.  They were breaching the final crest now; Ness could see the now dim orange glow of the meteorite that had started this whole mess through the bluish fog, and that vision urged his legs faster, faster, almost there...  
  
“Master Ness!”  
  
He skidded to a halt and turned back.  Jeff and Poo had engaged a pair of the eerie, semi-incorporeal Starmen that were blocking their path, and their shields were preventing Poo’s psychic powers from doing too much damage.  Ness raced back to their side, only to be hindered himself.  Before him was another gold-plated octopus robot, floating by some unknown power in front of him a foot or so off the ground.  
  
“Ugh, I don’t have time for you!” he exclaimed.  Worried over his friends, he choked up on his bat and swung; metal collided with metal with an unusual amount of force, and, thoroughly dented, the robot sailed far into the bluish distance.  “Hahaha, home _run_!” Ness laughed, but he kept his celebration short and turned quickly to get back to his friends.  
  
Something caught the corner of his eye as he began to move, so deep within the blue haze that he almost missed it.  If the one-eyed monster had not stepped out when it had, Ness may have completely overlooked what it was walking away from.  
  
It was Paula, standing stock-still.  Her body had been turned to stone.  
  
“NO!” he exclaimed, again altering his course without a second thought.  Too furious to think clearly, Ness shot the creature that had done this to her in its sorry excuse for a face with a full-on psychic blast, rainbow lights fizzling out as it collapsed in a ruined heap on the ground.  Ignoring it, Ness dashed to Paula’s side and watched his face fall, reflected in the surface of the smooth, faceted stone she had become.  He couldn’t muster up the psychic energy strong enough to bring her back to normal.  “No...”  
  
“Master Ness!”  
  
The Prince of Dalaam had come up from behind him, huffing with little spare energy himself; Jeff, riding on his back, had nearly collapsed.  His clothing was singed and his face covered in soot.  “We must hurry!  The meteorite is just up ahead!”  
  
The swarm of monsters was slowly closing in again.  Ness swallowed his worry and his fear and, summoning his last vestiges of strength, he struggled to lift the Paula statue onto his back.  “Don’t worry,” he grunted, trudging on, “I’m not leaving you behind.”  
  
With a store of strength the origin of which Ness could only begin to guess at, Poo cleared the way with the power his Master had taught him, and suddenly, finally, there they were, at the highest point in Onett.  The meteorite glowed faintly, like a life about to wink out.  
  
Ness’s insides felt cold, suddenly.  
  
“Put me down,” Jeff gasped, his voice rasping. “Let me see if...I can find...it...”  
  
Wordlessly, Poo knelt down to lower Jeff’s body to the ground right by the meteorite.  Adjusting his scorched glasses with a trembling hand, the boy genius leaned over to peer at the space rock while Poo fended off the mercilessly approaching hoard of foes.  
  
Ness could only watch them, all his spare energy used up in keeping Paula upright.  His breaths came quick and shallow, sensing their time was running out.  Jeff was digging around in the cooled crash site, looking for material that matched his father’s description of the Zexonyte, the mineral they needed to defeat Giygas.  “Hurry, Jeff,” he whispered, too soft for his friend to hear how his voice pleaded. “Please, please hurry.”  
  
“Ah!”  
  
Eyes suddenly wide, Ness looked between his two friends, who had both exclaimed at once.  Jeff was reaching more confidently now into the pit of the meteorite, but Prince Poo was on his knees, his proud head refusing to bow before a dark, ghost-like Starman though it had sapped him of a great deal of strength.  
  
“Poo--!”  
  
“Do not approach!”  Halted by the sharp order, Ness could only watch as Poo used his last ounce of strength to draw his sword and send it through the alien’s midsection.  It faded into the blue fog that Giygas had thrown over Onett, and only then did Poo let his shoulders droop.  They were out of time.  
  
“Ness!  I...I’ve got it!”  Jeff was crawling on shaking, burnt limbs towards them, a greenish-blue rock clutched in one hand.  
  
Neither of them were going to last much longer, Ness knew, and Paula...Paula would be gone, unless he got her help.  He hefted the statue she’d become once more, one final time, and met Jeff where Poo had collapsed.  He converted his last bits of courage into strength and brought them, together, back to Saturn Valley.  
  
When Apple Kid and Dr. Andonuts approached their arrival point in the center of the village, Ness was sobbing, inconsolably.  


* * *

  
  
“Ness...?”  
  
The red-capped head popped up immediately as the door to the Mr. Saturns’ hospital opened, and his three friends emerged together out into the chilly air.  In the light of the setting sun, they looked a little worn and a little tired, but otherwise unharmed.  Dr. Saturn was good at what he (she?) did.  
  
He rubbed the residual tears out of his eyes and stood up, looking among the three of them.  He couldn’t think of a word to say.  
  
“Oh, Ness.”  Paula stepped closer to match his gaze with her own, and Ness felt sure she could see the last several hours of tears just by looking at him.  “You were so worried.”  The empathy in her voice was so strong it almost hurt to listen to her.  “And you look so tired.”  
  
“We’re fine now,” Jeff assured him, though his clothing was still scorched in some places. “And hey!  We got what we came for.”  It was when he was proud of himself that Jeff seemed to show the most emotion; he was grinning, now, remembering how it felt to find the Zexonyte.  “Dr. Andonu--I mean, my dad, said they’re gonna work through the night and try to have the Phase Distorter done as soon as possible.”  
  
“Which means you should rest, Master Ness,” finished Poo, in a strangely gentle tone. “It is pointless to worry further.”  
  
Ness stared at each of them in turn and slowly shook his head.  “I...I can’t.  I--”  
  
“Don’t make me knock you out!” Paula teased, giving him a smile that melted his heart.  Her expression was a bit more serious when she reached out and gently, briefly, touched him on the cheek.  “Please?  You need to.”  
  
Ness stared at her, speechless.  
  
“C’mon.”  Jeff took him by the shoulder and the three of them led him across the way to the building that served as the Mr. Saturns’ hotel.  It had a bed where he could rest comfortably, at any rate, and that was all that mattered.  
  
They ignored Ness’s half-hearted protests, which really had no conviction in them.  Realizing he had no energy to argue was what made him finally consent, and he got himself into the bed.  
  
“See you in the morning,” Jeff said, as they clustered in the doorway.  
  
“May you have a dreamless rest,” said Poo.  
  
“Sleep well,” Paula added, smiling faintly.  And then they closed the door behind them.  
  
“...You really think he’ll sleep?”  
  
“Jeff, I said I would knock him out!”  
  
“Yeah, but--”  
  
“I suspect his exhaustion will catch up with him,” Poo interjected, just the faintest bit amused.  
  
“Dr. Saturn said he refused help until we were all okay.”  Paula’s lips had dipped into a frown.  “But he was at his limit, too.”  
  
“He was crying, when we left Onett,” Jeff imparted in a hushed voice. “I think he really thought we were going to...”  
  
“But what about _him_?!”  It was her turn to be worried, Paula found, with some surprise at how much her heart hurt at the thought of him finishing their task, at the last moments, on his own.  
  
“These are signs of a good leader,” Poo soothed.  
  
“We _know_ he’s a good leader!”  
  
“He’s also our friend,” Jeff added, soberly.  
  
“It is difficult to watch a friend become injured,” agreed Poo, with a meaningful nod. “He watched three.”  
  
Jeff and Paula looked at each other, quieted.  
  
For a time, they were silent.  
  
“I think...” Jeff said suddenly, after a long pause, “I think I’m gonna go see if Dr.--if my dad needs any help.  I mean, he’s got Apple Kid, but--”  
  
Paula smiled, quietly encouraging. “But Apple Kid’s not _you_.  Bet you anything you’ll help them finish faster.”  
  
Poo nodded deeply, confident.  
  
“...”  Jeff looked between them, his smile slow to materialize.  “Thanks, guys.”  He turned, to look out at the workspace set up in the center of the village.  “I’ll see you in the morning.”  
  
“Make sure you get some rest, too, okay?” Paula called.  As he took off, Jeff waved back.  
  
“I must also go meditate,” Poo acknowledged, glancing at the small sliver of sun still visible above the rocky cliffs to the north. “Paula, you should also rest.  If Jeff is helping them, they will soon be done.  And tomorrow will be a big day.”  
  
“Yes,” she agreed, trying not to glance at the door behind her. “Yes, I’ll sleep.”  
  
“Would you like an escort?”  
  
Paula laughed, lightly.  “I’ll be fine.  Thank you.”  
  
Poo bowed, courteously, from the waist, and, once Paula had curtsied in return, he headed off alone towards the entrance to the Valley.  
  
Paula had no idea where he was going, but she also felt it was something very personal, so she never asked.  It was the same courtesy he had afforded her, after all, she thought, as she slipped back through the door and into the room where Ness slept, heavily.  High above the bed, through a small, round window, she watched the sun set fully.  Soon, it began to snow.  


* * *

  
  
Jeff glanced up as the first few flakes landed on the machinery laid out before them, under the bright glare of construction work lights.  “Man.  Snow followed us all the way here,” he commented, breaking the long-standing silence that had descended on them after he’d first arrived at the work site.  
  
Dr. Andonuts, his father, also glanced up from his work, to blink at the snow sifting over the unfinished Phase Distorter.  He said nothing, so Jeff quickly returned to what he was doing, screwdriver clenched in numbing fingers.  
  
“So it would seem,” the man’s voice finally acknowledged, and Jeff looked back up at his father, who was still staring at the sky.  
  
He flipped the screwdriver between his fingers to keep the blood circulating.  
  
“Jeff.  You’ve...ah, you’ve come a long way, haven’t you?”  
  
“Huh?”  His hands paused.  
  
Dr. Andonuts shook his head, slowly returning his attention to his work, leaving his son confused.  
  
But Jeff let it go, and also brought his hands back to the machinery.  
  
“Your journey. That is, tomorrow.  Your trial tomorrow will be hard.”  
  
This time, only Jeff’s eyes rose over the rims of his fogging glasses.  “...Yes,” he agreed, hesitantly.  The man worked as he spoke, now.  
  
“All I can do is this one little thing.”  
  
...Was that regret Jeff was detecting?  
  
“We could never get to Giygas without this, though.”  What was he doing?  “And no one would know how to make the Phase Distorter without your advances.”  
  
Jeff again regretted speaking as another long stretch of silence passed between them.  
  
“To go off and save the world,” Dr. Andonuts mused, face tilted back up at the snow-releasing clouds. “It’s...well, it’s very brave.  You’re a very brave boy, Jeff.”  
  
The boy’s hands froze, as did, almost immediately, the tears slipping down his cheeks, unbidden.  


* * *

  
  
“I don’t want to wake you, Ness,” Paula whispered, kneeling beside his bed. “But it’s snowing outside, I think.  I hope, if you’re dreaming, you can see it.  It’s very beautiful.”  
  
There was no response.  Her dear friend was very deeply asleep.  
  
She watched the snow in that small round window for a while.  
  
“I know you’re worried about us, and about what’s to come,” she continued quietly, her gaze drawn back to his sleeping face. “But you don’t have to, you know?  The four of us, we can get through anything together.  Don’t you think so?  Truly?”  
  
Ness’s eyelids fluttered minutely, but otherwise he did not move.  With gentle hands, Paula reached up and removed his red cap, placing it on the table beside him.  Still, he did not wake.  
  
Several hundred more snowflakes drifted down outside the window.  
  
“I’m sorry if you feel pressured.  It’s just that from the time you saved me--no, from when I first saw a vision of your face, I felt like you could do anything.  Is that unfair, do you think?  I’m sorry if you think so.”  
  
She sniffed, as quietly as she could, and blotted out a tear with her finger.  “But, you don’t have to do everything by yourself.  You know?  We, Jeff and Poo and me, we’re always right beside you.  I won’t let you down anymore like I did today.  I’ll be there for you like you were there for me.  Like you’ve always been.”  
  
Two more tears slipped by her finger and were absorbed into the bedsheets.  Paula sniffed again, a little louder, and bravely reached forward to place a hand on his motionless one.  “We were the ones prophesied to save the world, Ness.  We’ll do it.  We’ll do it together.  Together we can do anything.”  


* * *

  
Poo’s eyes were closed, but his vision was vast, his hearing sharp.  At once, he saw Jeff watch his father and heard the scientist try to make up for ten years of absence.  At once, he saw Paula watch their leader sleep and heard her stumbling prayer over him, to him.  As he meditated, only his spirit could move of his own accord; his physical body had been decimated long ago when he finished his training.  In his vision, he wandered by his companions, his friends, and felt their fears, their passion, their beliefs.  In his vision, he felt their warmth, an overwhelming wave that, in this astral projection, melted the snow all around them.  It was this warmth which would save them in the end, he realized, not physical strength or power.  Just this warmth, this love.  And they had it to spare.  
  
When Poo came to, he found, to his surprise, that at some point during his meditation, his lips had formed themselves into a smile.  
  
Paula was just rising from her perch to go curl up against the wall when Jeff entered the small building, and Poo followed her soon after.  It was very late; the three of them only smiled a little at each other, sheepishly, and piled themselves against the bed under spare blankets to keep warm.  The snow stopped some time during the night, as they slept peacefully.


End file.
